Saturday, November 17, 2007

Karim Rashid at CCS

Absolutely amazing lecture on the CCS campus Friday night by this visionary designer. The auditorium was packed to the point that many actually had to watch him in the basement of the WB Ford Building via live video feed. During the entire lecture, all he did was talk about his approach and vision on design while images of his more than 2500 products flashed behind him. He touched on how we should all design for the now. We shouldn't have to design for the future and all of those people who can't design only speak of the past. His lecture also touched upon what is craft and what is mass production. He challenged archetypes and posed the question of whether the digital experiencial world is actually better than the real world (based upon how many hours we work and some of the top requested items for the holidays).

I wish more of my students were there to see him speak (I did run into a lot of fellow alums I hadn't seen in a long while though!). His your "job should be your hobby" comment hit home with me and I really need to stress this to my graduates. Despite Karim Rashid not being an illustrator, some of the things he touched on could apply to all aspects of our school and profession. Again- a great lecture.

4 comments:

I'm pissed I wasn't able to see this guy. I had known well in advance too. :(

In my experience, you can always learn something even if it doesn't apply to your "major". Any time there is a cool lecture going on, tell your students to go. They'll always have something to take away from it.

I actually enjoy glassblowing lectures or demos, simply because they get me super pumped to go do some sweet work of my own.

Boyle! You of all people I thought would be there. You missed a good one.

But I wholeheartedly agree about scoping out someone not in your major. It was just like yesterday that my ID friends convinced me to come check out this guy that had taught at CCS ages ago named Syd Mead. Now THAT lecture/ demo got me motivated and I've been hooked ever since. Seeing Syd push that gouache and do that old school rendering blew my mind.

That being said, I did take one of my classes to a lecture last week and it turned out to be a total dud. I couldn't wait to dart out of there and ended up apologizing to the class for making them sit through the ordeal. The instructor that had organized that particular lecture even came up to me at a later time to apologize- it was THAT awful.